A small update to my ghosting tool.
I got an email from Sean McLaughlin (formerly an animator at DreamWorks, currently teaching at Ringling College, Florida) saying that he really likes the the tool and asking if it was possible to incorporate multiple frame ghosting all at once. For example, the animator selects a range of keys in the time slider by shift+dragging and then when they press the Ghost button the tool creates ghosts for every frame of that range.
I thought it was a great suggestion and it was pretty straightforward to implement so I've added it in.
So now if there isn't a range of keys selected the tool works the same as before, if there is a selected range though each frame will get a ghost.
The updated version is now available to download from my usual Maya downloads page here - graphite9.com/MayaDownloads.html
NB! One thing to be conscious of, the more ghosts you create the more polys you add to the scene and the harder the strokes have to work to display them, so the scene will slow down. I generally only add ghosts to every frame if I'm working on something with a low-detail model like a ball.
If you do want to create a lot of ghosts with a character rig the main things to keep in mind are to work with the lowest res version of the rig if it has that option or just add only the essential meshes (if the character has separate arms/legs for example, maybe only add those to the meshes list so that only those get ghosted).
Cast:Brian Horgan
Tags:character, animation, MEL, Maya, spacing, timing, principles, ghosting, onion skinning, light box, CG, 3D, graphite9 and Brian Horgan